Haven't yet made plans for New Year's Eve, Londoners? Worry not: James
Lachno is here with tips on how to fill your diary.

New Year’s Eve. It’s like Christmas’s truculent, underachieving alcoholic younger brother – the black sheep of the holiday family. Yep, New Year’s Eve promises so much, only to deliver a grim blowout of dashed hopes – and minor fiscal ruin.

Even your local Nag’s Head, a place where they still let the “regulars” (i.e. a bloke called Les and his dog, Del-Boy) smoke in the snug, is charging an entry fee. Everywhere else, it’s £6.40 for a bottle of Carlsberg (if you can scrimmage your way to the bar). There are four million people trying to get into Covent Garden station. And when the taxi you ordered shows up it's 11.42pm, and the driver spends 25 minutes getting lost in the maze of road diversions, meaning you do “the countdown” while reversing through a back street in Camden with that irritating fop your flatmate knows from work, who keeps calling you “fella” in an extremely poor imitation of East End street lingo: like Charles Dance doing an impression of Danny Dyer. And he lives in Chelsea but doesn’t have a fiver for the fare.

That’s one familiar way to spend New Year’s. But for this week’s special 5 things to do in London column, we offer a plethora of good alternatives. Whatever you’re up to, you’ll be able to get the tube home for freebetween 11.45pm and 4.30am. #Winning.

1. Party time

Related Articles

Despite the obvious pitfalls (outlined above), NYE remains a clubber’s paradise. The biggest party will beat the O2 Arena(8-3am, £65), where dance masters The Prodigy headline and Rudimental and Jaguar Skills support. Other high calibre nights include Bugged Out(with Erol Alkan) at Studio Spaces, Wapping (£35, 10pm-6am), and the ever-reliable Fabric (9pm-9am, £45) where The Martinez Brothers will be spinning the tunes.

The Prodigy will perform at the O2 Arena on New Year's Eve 2013

2. Fireworks

This year’s Mayor of London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks display(6pm – 1am, free) should be the most spectacular yet. The traditional London NYE focal point will be at the London Eye, where those lucky enough to get close in after duking it out with around 250,000 others for a spot will also enjoy a DJ set until 12.45am.

3. Eat Eat Eat

Smart thinking: you’ll need something to soak up the booze, right? The well-heeled should try one of the themed banquets on offer at the Oxo Tower(from 6pm, £145 up), five minutes walk from the fireworks. “Bombay Café” Dishoom (found in Shoreditch and Covent Garden), will be throwing a Bombay Vintage Glam Party for New Year’s Eve with luxurious Indian menus and subcontinent soundclash DJs (8pm till late, £48). For something a bit more rustic, try Street Feast NYE (6pm-3am, £10) in Haggerston.

If you can’t go one night without joining rakish indie types nodding along at next week’s great white guitar hopes, head to Koko for theNME NYE Ball. Wolf Alice and Superford (both, admittedly, rather excellent) will be doing the four and a half chord honours (9pm till late, £15).